Radiation detectors have traditionally been used to measure the energy and count rate of detected radiation in order to identify sources of radiation or to calculate dose rate. For example, conventional radiation detectors typically use a scintillator coupled to a photomultiplier to convert incident radiation to electrical pulses, and the energy of the incident radiation can be determined from characteristics of the pulses. The energy of the incident radiation can be used to identify its source, and a counting of events, combined with their specific energies, can be used to determine a dose rate.
Each pulse has a characteristic shape that can have a length as long as multiple microseconds, and so each measurement conventionally takes just as long. During a pulse measurement process, conventional radiation detectors ignore subsequent signals until the present measurement is complete, and so fewer events are processed, thereby resulting in instrumental dead time for the radiation detector. Such dead time either produces inaccurate energy and/or dose rate measurements or requires prolonged exposure to the radiation environment to increase the statistical accuracy of one or the other measurements, neither circumstance being desirable, especially in highly radioactive environments. Thus, there is a need for an improved methodology for detecting radiation that reduces instrumental dead time, particularly when energy detection, source identification, and/or dose rate are determined in highly radioactive environments. Moreover, there is a need for radiation detector modules for use with such systems.